Wednesday, May 27, 2015

How to Improve Your Merchandising Performance

Merchandising is one of
the basic aspects of retail management that gives CPG companies the opportunity
to analyze product placement and display in order to stay competitive and to maximize
sales. Merchandising software allows companies to
streamline merchandising activities, saving time and money and making data
easier to collect, and therefore to become more efficient both in the field and
in the back. Here are some examples of how a merchandising software solution
can improve your field reps performance.

Maintaining organized shelves – a well-maintained shelf looks
more appealing to customers. Filed reps control that your products are always
on shelves and are properly located. The key goals of shelf organization are to
avoid misplaced products and gaps between products, to control the number of
facings and to make sure that there are enough products on the shelf.
Merchandising software makes shelf organization faster and easier, empowering
your field reps with such tools as built-in
photo reports, barcode product
search, and automated data entry.

Ordering and returning products – Field reps should always control
how many of your products left on the shelf and in store, and which of them
need a re-order. Damaged and overstock items can impact your sales. Using merchandising software gives your field reps an
opportunity to make product orders
and returns right at the
point-of-sale with just a couple of actions. Your field reps can view recommended order quantities and order history on their mobile devices
to create an order that makes sense.

Keeping control of promotional compliance and POS materials
placement
– Make sure your promotions are being followed in compliance with your
marketing strategy and your promotional displays, floor stickers, posters and
others POS materials are properly used at stores.Retail merchandising software provides customizable task templates with
different types of answers for everything that needs to be checked.

Analyzing competitors – If you are able to see where
exactly your competitors’ products are located and how they are priced you
receive a good indication of industry leaders marketing strategies. Customizable real-time reports to
analyze competitors’ strategies is one of the most important feature of merchandising software, which allow you to use
targeted marketing when competing with those surrounding brands.

Conducting customer and employee surveys – Capture accurate, live
data that can be analyzed in real time back at the home office. The more you
know about your customers, the easier it is to increase sales. Whether you are
processing customer or employee surveys, or market research surveys, sort your
report data using sophisticated retail merchandising software filters to get
the information you really need at a click of a button.